The rostrum is merely inches above the classroom floor and the orchestra is made up of two pianos. But for Pip Scott, a 17-year-old music student more used to the brass section than the baton, an early attempt at conducting this modest ensemble soon ends in a tangle of hands and a shake of the head to halt the music.

Another attempt with the expert guidance of Alice Farnham, one of Britain's foremost conductors, and Scott is soon guiding the players confidently though a snippet of William Walton's Suite from Henry V. Beaming, she returns to sit among her seven fellow students, all young women.

It is some distance from a packed Royal Albert Hall, but it was the appearance of Marin Alsop last September as the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, and some boorish comments from critics about whether women were equipped to conduct an orchestra, that has led to these classes at Morley College in south London.

Although New York-born Alsop won high praise for the event, beforehand the head of the Paris Conservatoire, Bruno Mantavani, pondered whether conducting was too "physically demanding" for most women. More eyebrow-raising still was the view of Vasily Petrenko, principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, who ventured that "a cute girl on a podium means that musicians think about other things".

The furore focused attention on the enormous shortage of female conductors with major orchestras. There have been some moves towards parity among musicians, but even in Alsop's homeland top conductors overwhelmingly tend to be male, with only one of the 22 leading US orchestras helmed by a woman.

"If I'd known then how little would change in 20 years I would have been surprised, and it does make me rather sad," Farnham said. "I was also surprised at myself for having been a little bit complacent about it, and thinking that's just the way it is, maybe conducting is just something not many women want to do."

Farnham is principal tutor on Morley's pioneering and experimental female-only conducting course, which has gathered eight young women aged 16 to 18 from music schools around Britain for a three-weekend introduction.

"We thought: how can we challenge these ideas?" said Andrea Brown, Morley's director of music. "It's about celebrating role models and equal opportunities, but it's also about putting that initial germ of an idea into a girl's mind, that this could be for me. We wanted to give them a safe place to have a go. There's no sense they have to achieve anything in particular. It's a bit of an experiment to see how they respond, and if conducting is something they might consider."

Scott admitted that before the Royal College of Music nominated her for the course she had not considered conducting as a career. "It's not so much actively sexist but there is a stereotype, really, of conductors being slightly older men. But hopefully a course like this will get younger women interested. It's a big opportunity."

Her fellow student Melisande Yavuz, a violinist and singer at the Royal Academy of Music, said the environment was helpful. "There is this idea that women are perhaps more self-conscious, more afraid of what people think of them. So maybe there's more of a natural shyness, not wanting to show people their emotions. It's a confidence thing more than anything."

After an initial Sunday spent mainly building confidence and trust, this Sunday the students hoisted their slim white batons for the first time and conducted the pair of pianists. Next week in the final part of the course they will direct more than 20 youth musicians under the expert tutelage of Sian Edwards, perhaps Britain's best-known female conductor.

The guidance is as much emotional and confidence-based as technical. As the students conduct the melancholy excerpt from Walton's piece, Farnham urges them to summon up "the yearning, the heartbreak" of loved ones parting before battle and imagine an emotion from their own life.

"It doesn't have to specifically be someone going off to fight at Agincourt. That's not so likely now."

Farnham said one of the obstacles to women's advancement as conductors was the way prowess in the profession was judged, often against a limited template. "There are more women in orchestras now, and one of the reasons is the simple fact that if you play your instrument really, really well you're going to do all right. But conducting is so subjective.

"I know great conductors with dreadful techniques, but they still make it happen because they're brilliant musicians with this amazing charisma. It's so hard to judge. You can't just say, well, the best person gets this conducting job. And it's hard when almost none of the role models are women."

• This article was amended on 24 March 2014. An earlier version misspelled Melisande Yavuz's name as Melisande Tavuz.